Entwined
by JayFeather123
Summary: This is a book based on Angel by Meg Cabot.


Entwined

By Josephine Thew

Prologue

I could hear a soft rustling sound, getting closer and closer. I tried to open my eyes, but they were tightly shut, as if someone had bound them shut with duct tape.

I struggled and moaned, but I could not move-I was paralysed from the waist down.

Again, I heard the soft, familiar rustling of leaves behind me, but this time they were accompanied by the harsh stomp of footsteps. Obviously the figure beside me was on a very important mission.

I opened my eyes. I could just about see a tall figure kneeling beside me, with neatly cut black hair and tawny eyes, beautiful and soft, like a does, but with hidden roughness that only I could see.

I thrashed around blindly, trying helplessly to escape, but a firm, smooth hand stopped me in my tracks. His skin was so pale, milky white, and it was as cold as ice, as if this person had never set foot inside the warmth of summer.

"Ssh," the dark figure whispered. "You'll be okay. Everything will be okay. You're safe now." His voice was soft and dreamy- he was obviously not from around here, from Lincoln. His voice sounded Scottish, but it also sounded as if it was Welsh, and Irish, and a whole lot of different accents that I just could not put a name to.

I could feel his cool hands stroking my hair, twining the waves gently around his fingers, almost as if to keep a part of me with him forever.

"Sleep well, my angel, my only." I felt his smooth lips gently brush my temple, then my collarbone, then my forehead.

His words echoed inside my head. "Sleep well, my angel, my only." They repeated again and again, getting ever fainter as his footsteps got ever softer and further away.

My eyelids began to droop again, but this time, I surrendered to my drowsiness. It would be a long walk back home in the morning, but that was the least of my worries.

Would we ever meet again?

Hmm. You're going to have to figure that out for yourself.

Chapter 1

I woke up in disbelief. _Why am I in the woods?! _I thought. Meanwhile, the scarlet rays of the early-morning sun were bearing down on me, so I decided to start heading home. I had some sort of idea what kind or reaction I would get from my parent, but that wasn't really my top priority at the moment. If she wanted to shout at me, then that was her problem, not mine. I would deal with her incompetence later, when my mind was back to normal and I had nothing better to think about. My mind flickered, and I got flashbacks of the night before, and the strange boy that was with me. I vaguely remembered lying in an ocean of my own blood, and I was dying, obviously dying. I looked down at myself. There were ugly scars running down my arms, and my shirt was torn into ribbons, tinted with the memories of the pervious night. Scarred, but definitely not dying. I smiled to myself. The strange boy must have gone and gotten help. But one question still lingered at the back of my skull: _how could I have healed overnight? And what had happened to the boy? _I gingerly edged the palm of my left hand into my shirt. I winced. Fresh wounds. I was still finding it difficult to breathe- someone, or something, must have attacked me. I checked my hand instinctively for signs of blood. It was completely covered. The wound must have been extremely deep for me to still be bleeding. If I was attacked, this was no human knife. An animal had torn me open. But that was confusing for me- surely if I had been attacked, I would remember it happening? Maybe I had been knocked out! _That _would explain why I didn't remember.

_But what kind of animal is smart enough to cover their tracks?_ I thought. _Why would they knock me out if they wanted me for their prey? And why would they leave me behind?_

When I eventually got to the front door of my house and squeezed through the door, my mum was waiting for me in the kitchen.

"Annabeth! Where the hell have you been? It's twenty past three in the morning!"

I coughed. "Sorry, Mum. I got lost halfway from school."

"Do you really think that's a sufficient excuse, young lady? Well, do you? It only takes half an hour to get from your school to our house by foot. So, tell me, where did you spend the rest of the night? Hmm? At Beatrice's house? Don't you nod at me. I happened to phone this morning to see if she had seen you anywhere. She said she saw you going into the woods!"

"I study there, Mum! Everyone knows that. Even you. I just took the wrong path, that's all. By the time I got half-way home, it was already dark. I figured I may as well have camped out in a tree and stayed there for a while. Much nicer than this dump."

"Don't you start. Your brother has already started complaining about this house, and we've lived here for years!"

I laughed inwardly, but keeping a poker face, so as not to annoy my mother. We had moved house from London to Lincoln a few years ago, but because me and Josh had grown up there for most of our lives and we missed our friends, we hated this house. Not that I minded the forest and the wide open spaces here, but we could have at least bought a nicer house to live in. We could certainly afford it, but Mum said that we moved in here because it was cheaper, easier to manage, and it would stop us from having morbid thoughts about the past- a lot of our family and friends had died in the bombing in London, and the ones who didn't die of that died in "mysterious circumstances", which just about everyone but my mother knows means "murdered". I did once try to explain that to her, but all she said was that I shouldn't jump to conclusions and that anything could have happened to them. Only recently has Josh found out what happened to them- when it actually happened, he was still very young and he wouldn't have understood what it all meant anyway. But now that he was seven years old, only eight years younger than me, he properly understood what death was and had the strength to be able to get over it.

I went into the lounge and flopped down on the sofa. "Hey, knucklehead. How was school?" Josh looked up from his computer. He had huge bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, but when Josh is waiting for someone, he will wait forever. "Where have you been?" he questioned, suspicious. "Out." I answered, not wanting to give too much away. "Out where?" Josh prompted. "Just out. School stuff." I opened my arms and he fell into them, exhausted. I ruffled his hair. "Hey. What's up?" I said softly in his ear. Josh started to sob. "I miss Dad," he said.

Our Dad had gone away to fight in Afghanistan for the army. He wasn't going to come back until the war was over- not even for Christmas- but we hadn't told Josh that. Not yet. "He'll be back soon," I reassured him. "He's just busy saving people right now. But he told me to tell you that he has you in a extra special place in his heart."

"Huh?" Josh asked, looking at himself. "I'm still here!"

I gasped dramatically. "Hey Josh, where's your nose gone?"

Josh raised his hand, and pushed onto his nose so fast, he slapped himself in the face. "Got ya!" I said, and started to tickle him. "Hey! Anna! Stop! That tickles!" he squealed. I grinned at him. "It was meant to!" I said, matter-of-factly.

The only thing missing from this precious moment was the knowledge that my dad was never going to come back. Because the war was never going to end. It would not be the worst thing to come either...


End file.
